AS
A SCIENTIST
He was a controversial scientist as he favored radical ideas and unpopular
beliefs:
After
his tour to Africa, he came to the conclusion and believed that
the African people were incapable of adapting positively to western
civilization. Galton once again blamed their heredity and innate
ability for people to adjust, elaborating his theory of inherited
human abilities. This made him more established and he started collecting
the data in variety of ways and he manifested the innate theory
of human ability.
Galton
was strict in his belief that the innate foundation for human abilities
on the basis of which he developed a set of tests to measure human
ability. These tests were developed in Anthropomtric Laboratory.
He had hoped that these tests would predict eminence in people early
in their lifespan. The tests included several aspects. They are
: Height, Sitting Height, Armspan, Breathing capacity, Strength
of Pull, Strength of Squeeze, Swiftness of Blow, Keenness of Sight,
Memory of Form, Color Discrimination and Steadiness of Hand. Galton
described eminence, which seemed to be parallel to intelligence.
Ultimately
he gathered data from over
nine thousand individuals in the twelve categories that were identified
in the testing battery. Those categories consisted mostly of objective
measurements of differing physical characteristics. The numbers
of tests were held, which measured some mental abilities like keenness
of sight and memory of form. He hoped the data could be used to
identify eminent individuals at a fairly young age, so that they
could mate with other eminent personalities to encourage the overall
strength of the genetic base in his society.
ANTHROPOMETRIC
LABORATORY
Galton developed his tests into Anthropometrics laboratory, which
was initially displayed at International Health Exhibition in 1884.
It showed a surprising focus on the physical aspects of human kind
and a lack of mental testing even though he had hoped to predict
eminence in the mental arena.
EUGENICS
| Although Galton finally compromised on nature-nurture issue, there was some doubt about his heavily favored hereditary side of the argument. This belief was the cornerstone for eugenics. To study this, he spent the second half of his life devoted to this subject. |
|
His
belief in hereditable human characteristics, led him to develop
a theory with the aim to improve human stock by utilizing a selective
mating programme. This was known as Eugenics. Through this programme
he wanted to encourage the human race by mating eminent people together
and as a result bring in physical and mental improvement in society
at large.
It
was possible to bring improvement in each human being, because the
innate characteristics of each individual’s ancestry would
descend itself in all future generations. He developed this theory
by examining the family trees of outstanding people. It was revealed
during the course of the examination that statistically significant
proportions of those people were inter-related.
The
limitations of such an examination was the incapability of appreciating
the likelihood of similar backgrounds in education and experience
that closely related individuals would probably have to share. This
fact was also ignored in the other portions of evidence that he
cited, namely examination of the "National Character"
for different areas of the world and also a set of twin studies.
Galton was one of the first to utilize twins in the study of genetic
based hypotheses in human beings. He also contributed to a variety
of other areas, which became the basis for testing individual differences.
His
eugenic ideas were ruthlessly applied with horrific results in the
20th century. In the same century, in Germany, Adolph
Hitler advocated eugenics.
|
